{"id":90429,"date":"2016-08-22T10:15:41","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T09:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=90429"},"modified":"2016-08-22T14:01:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T13:01:58","slug":"cosmos-film-review-cosmically-significant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/cosmos-film-review-cosmically-significant\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmos film review: cosmically significant?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The final film from director Andrzej \u017bu\u0142awski, who passed away in February this year at the age of 75, <em><strong>Cosmos<\/strong><\/em> arrives ready-made with an aura of both mystique and anticipation: both for being an adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz&#8217;s infamously complex novel, and for its pre-release acclaim. As it turns out, both feelings are justified: it is indeed an unwieldy, unforgiving beast, but at the same time there&#8217;s something magnetic about it that makes it hard to turn away.<\/p>\n<p>Primarily focusing on two young men: Wiltold (Jonathan Genet) and Fuchs (Johan Lib\u00e9reau) as they retreat to a French guesthouse &#8211; ostensibly to get away from it all &#8211; only to bear witness to a number of unusual incidents (various animals being found hung on trees, the guesthouse owner literally freezing when she gets too worked up), to say it&#8217;s tricky to follow is an understatement. Consecutive scenes seemingly bear little narrative similarities to each other, and the dialogue is odd at the best of times, yet somehow it works.<\/p>\n<p>The whole production feels more like a non-musical opera than a film, various acts crescendoing before returning to focus on more mundane activities. It very quickly becomes nigh-on impossible to follow from a narrative standpoint, leaving us instead to centre on the more intimate character moments: the capering and pratfalls of Wiltold (who Genet is utterly hypnotic as) and the lovely, besotted housemaid Catherette (Cl\u00e9mentine Pons). Is it a story of a dysfunctional family forced to find a common ground, or something deeper entirely? It totally depends on your interpretation of events.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, that seems to be the meaning behind the story: give it the patience that such an ambitious production like <em><strong>Cosmos<\/strong><\/em> deserves, and somewhere down the line you might be able to draw meaning from it. If not, then it&#8217;s tricky not to be ensnared by the beguiling yet intriguing nature of it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We attempt to decipher Andrzej \u017bu\u0142awski&#8217;s final film, Cosmos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":90437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[5320],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/960-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}